


folklore

by AphrxditeDaughter



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, F/M, Jason is a gentleman, M/M, Outlander AU, Piper cherokee, Piper pov (mostly), War AU, fluffly jasiper, minor caleo, minor frazel, piper travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25705783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AphrxditeDaughter/pseuds/AphrxditeDaughter
Summary: A sudden visit to the place of  her ancestors changes Piper's life forever, when she touches a stone and opens her eyes she doesnt realizes that she has traveled through time.OUTLANDER AU! (Kind of) Inspired on folklore album by Taylor Swift.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Nico di Angelo & Will Solace, Thalia Grace/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	folklore

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Really hope you like this story. English isnt my first language so this can have a few mistakes, im open to helpfull critics.  
> Also, all that i wrote about usa natives is based in the google information, so a few things can be strange.  
> Please let me know if you like the chapter.

_ <<We gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean. _

_Some to throw, some to make a diamond ring >>_

_\- my tears ricochet, ts._

I'll start to be honest with you from the beginning, some stories about Grandpa Tom made my hair stand on end. And as the car drove down the road, which was as familiar and strange as a childhood memory, I couldn't stop thinking about all the fables that had been whispered to me in the reserve in summers.

Being a Cherokee, half in my case, was like a burden on my shoulders that my father -for example- didn't seem to do justice to. Not at least with his expensive shirt and the levi’s jeans that no one would have chosen to walk through the woods.

It didn't even make sense to use a swanky Audi, my mother's choice, to sneak between the unpaved roads. There was no one to brag about as a Hollywood star, and the home in the Hamptons was more worth hiding than being told here.

"Piper McLean, are you listening to me?" Silena asked, leaning in the middle of the front seats to scowl at me.

Her hair cascaded to her side.

“No.”

I heard the faint whistle of Dad's laugh at my honest answer, and the terrifying look my half-sister sent me from her post. I tell you that I would have preferred to continue dealing with that look to finish how I ended that day.

"Do you want me to buy those tickets?" She repeated vehemently, her eyes returning to the path in front of her, probably searching for something on her cell phone. To be older than me, and about to get married, Silena was quite childish.

We were like two drops of oil, except for the eyes that my mother inherited from both of us. While she had fine, jet-black hair, contrasting against her pale skin, I had thick brown hair cut in layers - she hated it - and skin just a shade lighter than my father's.

We had not a lot of things in common.

But we love each other, that’s how it works.

"For The Demigods?"

"They're going to be close to my university, we can go with Charlie and that boy of yours."

I practically heard dad bounce in his seat.

"What boy?"

"Silena is crazy. Don’t listen her”

“You're twenty years old, Piper," she complained. “Please tell me you're with someone because I'm going crazy, your last boyfriend went to what? fifteen?

"You can avoid them until you're forty, darling."

"One, I hope to find someone before I'm forty. Two, I'm not seeing anyone yet. Three, there are more important things right now than concerts and guys.”

The warm atmosphere instantly disappeared with my words, and my eyes stung again. I almost wanted to hit them, remind them why we were on the reservation in the middle of fall. 

I glued myself to the seat, placing the earphones back in my ears and letting the melody engulf me in beautiful memories. It was probably the last time he was there and he knew it, because without Grandpa Tom the reservation was pointless.

When Silena shook me we were already at the cabin complex, familiar and friendly faces diving into us. My half sister, with no blood of any kind to bind her, received the same sorrowful and solemn treatment as I did.

Because, for Grandpa Tom, Silena was his granddaughter even though the blood didn't bind them.

They hugged us and gave us condolences for a long time, until she reached us two -dad had practically disappeared to finalize details- Mrs. Folk. The same woman who had watched us for years, when she would let us pick strawberries with her and tell us some legends.

Summers were worth it. Grandpa Tom had always looked at me that way, out of the corner of his eye, had told me how great i were for this world, how beautiful i were, how good i must be, and how everything would come in due course.

He had been my greatest reference in life, away from the screens of the industries in which my parents were. There, in the reserve, we were just two more girls who played with dirt and could use what they wanted, without expensive shoes or perfect dresses.

Mom used to not give us much truce with it when we were away. My childhood photos looked like professional shoots, with a green background, stylist's chosen outfits and perfect hair.

Because my mother was perfect. I guess it still is.

"I left the clothes in the cabin, girls," Mrs. Folk told us, her eyes were blue as the sky and her gray hair seemed to fit her perfectly. Looking at her for a second, I missed the hazelnut hue I'd known a few summers ago.

Was gone. Like a hundred things in my life at that time.

Grandpa Tom was a pretty bossy man, so a traditional step-by-step funeral didn't seem like something he wouldn't do. Now, did you feel like wearing traditional clothing? Not too many.

I had grown up bullying enough because of the feathers in my hair, because of my skin tone, or because of my curses in a language that the children did not understand, so in a certain way, dressing traditionally unearthed all the fears that I had kept in a drawer.

But you can't say no to the dead.

And I could never say no to Grandpa Tom.

Silena and I practically pushed each other into the cabin that had belonged to my grandfather, the same bright wood color and the same furniture that had always been there.

It felt nostalgic, like a ten-minute sleep class that we were allowed to attend but had an expiration date.

I didn't let nostalgia come at me, because I had never been particularly sentimental and had cried enough those days.

"It is strange, isn't it?"

"I can't believe it's over," I said.

Silena watched me, before putting her thin arm around my shoulders. It was only a few inches taller, almost a span due to her platform sneakers.

"I wish he was at my wedding. I was going to ask him to turn me in.”

The confession was made with watery eyes, perhaps the same as mine would look.

"I'm sure he would have loved it."

We crawled into the room without saying anything else. Perhaps too shocked by the chain of feelings. Four days ago I had been at the university, in my room, with my partner talking about trivialities; And then I was there on a quick trip to the funeral of a person who had been a world to me.

We put on our clothes as if we had done it a hundred times before. As if it had been a part of our being.

A skirt made of rustic fabric, with a convenient elastic for which I would later thank Mrs. Folk at the waist and the top consisting of a kind of poncho of the same material but short, which revealed the sides of our stomachs.

Tribal designs on the edges, of a reddish color.

Two braids on the side of my hair, framing my face, and with small feathers at the end.

Since it was October the weather was not strange. The vigorous air that entered through the only open window lashed at my hair, which was everywhere; the light blow of the wind whistled against my ears and I had to help myself to comb the strands in place.

I sighed, looking at my image in the old mirror that adorned my room.

"I feel ridiculous," Silena snapped solemnly, her eyes narrowing at herself, her pretty figure standing behind me.

Don't get us wrong, I am proud of my Cherokee and Silena roots just adapt to it as best she can because it's like it really is; but no, of course being barely clothed in the autumn chill is a bit overwhelming.

It was actually overwhelming.

* * *

  
  
  


The funeral was strange. At least while trying to understand words in a language i didn't speak fluently, things like extremely nice compliments was the only thing I understood.

The cold beat against my exposed skin and all I could think about was that my grandfather was buried there.

Suddenly all I wanted to do was go back in time, when I was seven years old and we dreamed of being pirates escaping through the forest.

Suddenly being twenty was exhaustive, because there was no grandfather, there was no mother, and there was hardly a place to call home.

I didn't allow myself to cry, not in front of people saying nice things about Grandpa Tom and smiling at me like nothing was happening. As if death was just the next item on a list of things to do.

It was going on a lot in my head.

Silena was next to me, her arm tangled in mine and her hair scraping against the patch of skin between us.

"Do you want to sleep outside? Tadi offered me sleeping bags, just like the old days” Silena asked when all was over. And I knew that although everything that comes with sleeping outside is detestable to her, this would be the last time we would see the sky as it was that day.

I nodded.

"I'm going to go get something earlier. Shall I meet you at the cabin?"

Actually, I just wanted to walk.

"I'm going to convince Dad to go buy marshmallows."

Grandpa Tom and I used to walk. I were only a morning person when i saw him through the bedroom window, and almost automatically ran with him to the entrance of the cabin to accompany him on his walk.

Sometimes Silena would join, and sing songs while trying to whistle because we believed that we could communicate that way with the birds. Grandpa just watched us.

Sometimes he spoke to us about other times.

He told us over and over about when he was young, how thick the forest was and how it seemed - in his stories - that it was a place with several more kilometers.

There was a huge amount of stories, legends, songs, life written in the trees with older stumps that many of us saw. Tall, leafy canopies, and the characteristic scent of nature hitting us at every turn.

I hardly noticed when I reached the small hill, an elevation crowned with a monolith of stones. I had always liked the stories about the stones, even if they were chilling and Silena believed that they were going to call us and we would die.

Grandfather Tom used to say that the stones called the travelers, but that they left and did not return. Some believed that it was a point of fusion with the earth, they danced around them and prayed to nature.

" **From the earth we are, and to the earth we return** "

I will tell you a secret about that day, it was not the singing of the stones calling me that made me approach them that day. It was my stupidity.

At twenty, we think we are a little more intrepid than we are, so being in the land that I had always seen and never stepped on practically moved every gear of idiocy in me.

_What is the worst that can happen?_ ; I asked myself.

Until I was there, surrounded by the stones and holding on to my mobile phone - very willing to take pictures - what happened.

The noise started slowly. Like a ballad I turned up in volume.

The sound was overwhelming, as if someone had played some horse fight scene into their headphones.

It had started as a buzzing, incessant and annoying, which escalated and escalated until it became a martyrdom to my ears.

By far, the pain was the worst, when the disorientation of wanting to get away from there made me put my hands on one of the stones; and right there it was as if something went through my body, turning the world black for a second, as if I was about to pass out.

When I became aware again my body was on the floor, my clothes wrinkled. The noise, going before had been like a staged and alien roar, became pure realism. The hooves of a horse and the vetoes of some men filled the air.

Then a shot.

Jumped in my own place then. Scared like a cat as i tried to guess and remember what the path to the cabins was, or actually the way back to normal.

"Silena," I called, almost with a scream, my voice must have sounded anxious because my heart was buzzing against my ears.

That someone was shooting a movie inside the reserve seemed crazy to me, and I greatly doubted that there were animals to hunt sportsfully.

Imagine a dead rabbit or deer, or what creature, took my brain to wander for a few seconds. A list of why I had chosen to be a vegetarian started popping into my mind until the sound.

Another shot.

My feet moved, as if some logical thing made my body automatically react to the situation. To say I was miserable was an understatement, because I had never been particularly athletic, and soon after I ran I ended up stumbling.

If I'd had tennis instead of loafers, some very expensive and ruined now just in case you want to know, I probably could have gone a little further.

I was really silly not to notice the renewed thickness of the forest.


End file.
